| Type: |
ARC sport plane |
| Wingspan:
| 50" |
| Wing Area: |
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| Airfoil: | Fully symmetrical
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| Weight: | |
| Construction: |
Balsa sheeted foam wing, balsa and ply fuse |
| Controls: | Aileron, elevator, rudder, throttle |
| Power: | O.S. 46SF |
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I bought this as a new home for my O.S. .46. I didn't want to do a lot of building, so this balsa ARC seemed to be the ticket. The quality of the airplane itself is very good. The pre-built fuse was straight and well constructed, as were the presheeted foam core wings and stabs. Also, it came with a fiberglass (not ABS!) cowling. On the other hand, the landing gear was way too flexible, and the kit included some weird nylon mounting brackets for the wing bolts. The instructions are pretty poor, with hard to see illustrations. What's strange is that every part in the kit is marked with it's own part number, yet the manual never refers to these! I made a few mods, one of which included replacing the nylon wing mounting brackets in the fuse with more conventional plywood ones. Also, I reduced the diheral by half. The finished plane came out 5 1/2 lbs. The wing, I think, came out very heavy. I'm not sure exactly why, but I may have used too much epoxy on the dihedral brace.
The plane flies very well, and has good, though not spectacular vertical. This is the easiest to take off taildragger that I've owned. It tracks straight and true, even if you jam on the throttle. Landings are easy too, but the soft main gear needs to be rebent after every 5 or 6 times. Because of this, I replaced the main gear with some higher quality Halco aluminum gear. The tail gear is pretty bad too, being made of some very thin and flexible metal. As I've been flying it over the last several months, I've been moving the CG steadily back. It now flies inverted hands off, and will climb in knife edge. Snaps still aren't the cleanest, possibly due to the thick leading edge, but it can do a pretty nice tumbling maneuver. All in all, this is a very good all-around sport plane. The one thing I'd do different if I built it again would be to remove all the dihedral and maybe make the rudder larger.
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